I had some curiosity and I was wondering if anyone could shed some light on this. So, let's say I have a query set $Q$ that consists of the following sets of words: {alligator
, crocodile
, snake
}. And then I have a huge database $D$ of words: {python
, eagle
, iguana
, penguin
, mouse
, chameleon
} (for the sake of simplicity, let's say $D$ only has those 6 words. Now the problem that we would like to address is this:
Given a query set $Q$, find elements in $D$ that are similar to the elements in $Q$.
So this would return {python
, iguana
, chameleon
} as these belong to the category of reptiles
, same as the elements that are in $Q$. My question is if this problem has already existed before? And if so, is there is a specific name to this problem of interest? And does anybody know some most relevant significant papers towards this area?
This problem so much sounds like it came from information retrieval, but I'm not sure since I'm not expert in that area. This problem just came up to me and got me curious and wondering. Thanks so much!